Russian Uniate Church

In 988, Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich introduced Christianity in his Greek rite as the state religion of Russia . The Kiev Church inherited the traditions of the Byzantine East and was part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople .

Kiev Metropolitan Isidore was one of the signatories of the Florentine Union in July 1439. The Grand Duchy of Moscow refused to recognize the Union of Florence and separated from the Kiev Metropolitanate, electing its metropolitan in 1448 and forming a separate metropolitanate with its center in Moscow.

The Uniate Church on the territory of the Commonwealth was formed after the conclusion of the Union of Brest in 1596. Most of the bishops of the Kiev metropolitanate, led by Metropolitan Mikhail Rogoza, supported the Union of Brest, as a result of which the metropolitanate was reassigned to the pope, having managed to preserve all the dioceses. At the same time, the opponents of the union preserved the Orthodox church organization, which led to the parallel existence of two Kiev metropolises: the Greek Catholic and the Orthodox. Orthodox protests against the transfer of churches and monasteries to the union were expressed in the form of literary polemics , debates in the Sejm , fraternal movement , as well as open speeches up to rebellion, among which Mogilevsky 1618 and Vitebsk 1623 are distinguished. In turn, the Uniate Church in order to increase influence among the population created its own system of educational institutions and church fraternities, actively participated in literary controversy, and was engaged in book publishing.

Already in 1601 in Vilna, the Metropolitan of Kiev, Galicia and All Russia Ipatiy Potsey founded the first theological seminary of the Russian Uniate Church at the Trinity Monastery ^[1] .

On the whole, the Uniate Church enjoyed state support, although it was regarded as second-rate, as evidenced in particular by the fact that the largest Greek Catholic hierarchs were not included in the Senate .

Gradually, the authority of the Uniate Church grew, which was facilitated by the creation of the Basilian Order , as well as the transition to the Greek Catholicism of Meletius Smotritsky . Since the 1630s, the gentry began to lean towards the union. In the 1630s, Metropolitan Joseph of Ruth attempted to create a unified Orthodox Christian Kiev Patriarchate, but the project was unsuccessful. Despite the efforts to spread the union, in 1647 in the Commonwealth there were about 4 thousand Uniate and more than 13.5 thousand Orthodox parishes ^[2] .

The consecration in 1620 by the Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophanes III of the new Orthodox hierarchy in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (before that the Orthodox bishops were not allowed to the pulpit by King Sigismund III ), the division of the institutions between the Orthodox and the Uniates by the letter of Vladislav IV in 1635 approved the division into 2 legal Kiev metropolises ( and Orthodox) and consolidated the split of West Russian (Belarusian-Ukrainian) society. Attempts at his reconciliation were made at the councils of 1629 in Kiev and 1680 in Lublin , convened at the initiative of the Uniate hierarchy, but were ignored by the Orthodox. In the 1630s, Metropolitan Joseph Rutsky hatched a project to create a patriarchy on the basis of the Kiev Metropolitanate, common to the Orthodox and Uniate churches, which interested Orthodox opponents, including Peter Mogila . But this idea did not meet the support of the papacy, the government of the Commonwealth, did not find an understanding of the Orthodox population.

During the war of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with Russia of 1654-1667, the union was banned in the territories occupied by Russian troops. After the Andrusovsky armistice of 1667, the ruling circles of the Commonwealth sharply increased their support for the union. An even greater increase in its attractiveness in the eyes of the gentry was facilitated by the subordination of the Kiev Orthodox Metropolitanate to the Moscow Patriarchate in 1688, which meant the loss of independence of the Orthodox Church of the Commonwealth and its complete submission to the interests of Russia, the enemy in the recent war. Especially the support of the Uniate Church and at the same time the pressure on the Orthodox by the central government increased during the reign of Jan Sobesski . In 1692, the union was adopted by the Przemysl diocese , in 1700 - Lviv , in 1702 - Lutsk . At the same time, the Uniate population of the Commonwealth exceeded the Orthodox ^[2] .

In the XVIII century, a gradual Latinization of the Uniate Church began, expressed in the adoption of the Latin rite , which contradicted the conditions of the Brest Cathedral in 1569. The Latinizers were guided by the Basilians , who came mainly from Polish-Catholic families. Of particular importance was the Zamoysky Cathedral held in 1720, which decided to unify worship, accepting liturgical books approved by the papal authority, and refusing to use non-Catholic publications. After 1720, two trends emerged in the Uniate Church: supporters of the first sought to borrow Roman Catholic traditions, the second - to preserve their own West Russian Orthodox traditions and the purity of the rite ^[2] .

From 1729 (officially from 1746) to 1795, the city of Radomyshl was the residence of the Uniate metropolitans. On March 5, 1729, the nominee and administrator of the Kiev Uniate Metropolitanate, Bishop Atanasy Sheptytsky , who later became the Metropolitan later that same year, took over Radomyshl.

In 1791, in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Uniates made up 39% of the population, and in the territory of modern Belarus - 75% (in rural areas - more than 80%) ^[3] .

Most followers of the Uniate Church were peasants. In addition, the Uniates were part of the townspeople and petty gentry ^[4] .

After the divisions of the Commonwealth , when most of the territory of the dioceses of the Uniate Church became part of the Russian Empire , some Greek Catholics joined the Orthodox Russian Church , and some remained subordinate to Rome.

The general policy direction of all Russian emperors was adamant. Parishioners of the Russian Greek Catholic Church were considered as Orthodox, who, under pressure, accepted the jurisdiction of the Pope, and who, under any pretext, are inclined to violate this jurisdiction. Already during the reign of Catherine II , the activity of converting Greek Catholics to Orthodoxy on the lands of Lithuania and Belarus was widespread ^[5] . In 1787, Catherine II decided that only printing houses subordinate to the Synod can print spiritual books in the Russian Empire, and the activities of Greek Catholic printing houses ceased. In 1794, the Orthodox Bishop Viktor Sadkovsky sent appeals to the Uniates to switch to the "right faith", which were read in the cities and villages as state acts. If there were people who wanted to convert to Orthodoxy, the authorities wrote them down in books, paid them cash benefits and sent a priest with a detachment of soldiers who seized the church from Greek Catholics and handed them over to the Orthodox, and sent Greek-Catholic priests along with their families. It was ordered to abolish Greek Catholic parishes if less than 100 yards were assigned to them, but if they wanted to convert to Orthodoxy, they were allowed to exist. The Greek Catholic dioceses, with the exception of Polotsk, were abolished, and the bishops were sent to retirement or abroad.

Upon the death of Theodosius Rostotsky (1805), on February 24, 1807, Pope Pius VII signed the bull “In universalis Ecclesiae regimine”, which proclaimed the Greek Catholic Metropolis of Galicia as the successor of the Kiev Uniate Metropolis.

After the break (during the reign of Emperors Paul I and Alexander I ), the struggle with the unity was continued by Emperor Nicholas I ^[6] . The administrative liquidation of the Uniate Church was preceded by a campaign of rapprochement of the Uniate rites with the Orthodox, led by Bishop of Lithuania Joseph Semashko . In 1839, at the Cathedral in Polotsk, the decisions of the Brest Cathedral were annulled: 1607 Uniate parishes and more than 1 million 600 thousand people transferred to the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church . The only Uniate diocese in the Russian Empire was the Kholm diocese , which was converted to the Orthodox in 1875 ^[7] .

• Mikhail Rogoza (July 27, 1589–1599)
• Hypatius Potsey (September 26, 1599 - July 18, 1613)
• Joseph Rutsky (April 5, 1614 - February 5, 1637)
• Rafail Korsak (1637 - August 28, 1640)
• Anton Selyava (March 18, 1641 - October 5, 1655)
• Gabriel Kolenda (April 24, 1665 - February 11, 1674)
• Cyprian Zhokhovsky (February 11, 1674 - October 26, 1693)
• Leo Slyubich-Zalensky (September 22, 1695 - August 24, 1708)
• Yuri Vinnitsky (May 7, 1710 - September 22, 1713)
• Leo Kishka (September 17, 1714 - November 19, 1728)
• Atanasy Sheptytsky (August 18, 1729 - December 12, 1746)
• Florian Grebnitsky (December 16, 1748 - July 18, 1762)
• Philip Volodkovich (July 18, 1762 - February 12, 1778)
• Leo Sheptytsky (1778-1779)
• Jason Smogozhevsky (1780-1788)
• Theodosius Rostotsky (November 1, 1788 - January 25, 1805)

The subsequent, put in July 1806 by the Russian government on such a dignity - Irakli Lisovsky , Grigory Kokhanovich , Iosafat Bulgak - the papal throne considered only administrators.

After the Union of Brest in 1596, the Kiev , Polotsk archdioceses and the Pinsk , Lutsk , Vladimir and Kholm dioceses became uniate. The union was not accepted by the Lviv and Przemyslysk dioceses. After the death of Bishop Cyril Terletsky in 1607, the Lutsk diocese gradually departed from the union, returning to it in 1702 with Bishop Dionisy Zhabokritsky. After the capture of Smolensk by the Polish troops in 1616, the king nominated Lev Krevza in 1625 for the Archbishop of Smolensk, thereby establishing the Uniate Smolensk Archdiocese. In 1691, the Przemysl diocese with Bishop Innocent Vinnitsky joined the Uniate Kiev Metropolis, and in 1700 the Lviv diocese joined with Bishop Joseph Shumlyansky.

• Kiev archdiocese
• Polotsk Archdiocese
• Smolensk Archdiocese
• Pinsk and Turov diocese
• Lutsk and Ostrog diocese
• Vladimir and Brest Diocese
• Diocese of Kholm
• Lviv diocese
• Przemysl Diocese

By the time of the partition of the Commonwealth, the Russian Uniate Church numbered 9,300 parishes, 10,300 priests and 4.5 million parishioners (while the entire population of the Commonwealth was 12.3 million people ^[8] ). In addition, the Uniate Church owned 172 monasteries with 1,458 monks ^[2] .

• The struggle of the Uniates and the Orthodox

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